


Beyond North

by Dragestil



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Urban Magic Yogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragestil/pseuds/Dragestil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at how Trottimus came to live on shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond North

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neurodivergentnerd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neurodivergentnerd/gifts).



> Recommended listening: https://youtu.be/JWsJ7iw5hHo

Far beyond the eyes of men, far beyond the reach of their greatest ships, far beyond the last known islands and coasts, the water lived. Cold and dark and deep, it stirred and swayed and breathed. And in its furthest corners, in the nooks at the end of the world, there stayed the impossible creatures with limbs and fins and magic in their veins. _There_ , there where no one dared tread, was the selkie court.

On ice floes they gathered, beings of all sizes with eyes like fire and skins hanging from their shoulders. Tangled in long hair lay shells and coral branches and strands of kelp pulled from the seabed. They were beautiful. They were _terrible_. Everything was right with the world.

After dark, when the sun was naught but a memory, the elders would gather. Grandfathers and uncles would sit by blue fires telling tales of their exploits, of the women they had won, the traps they had lain. By their feet, the children chattered quietly, falling silent only when they stories got interesting enough, when the stakes were absurdly and improbably high.

In the depths below, the matriarchs hunted and sang. Through the black waters, their songs rose in eerie harmony, never quite reaching the surface. They did not talk - what need was there? It was easy enough to know where they all stood by the missing refrains, the voices lost to land in the migratory months. Their songs were their celebrations; their songs were their mournings. They were all together again and not. That was the way of things.

And beyond it all, beyond the floes and the splashes of huntresses and the giggles of pups, in halls carved into the heart of an iceberg, the royalty took up their posts. The kings and queens, the leaders from all the tribes, drew close in frozen quarters and talked in murmurs. From the galleries, their children watched, learned what parts they would one day play.

“There’s been talk of trouble,” a grizzled man with a scarred skin said, voice like bellows even when whispering.

“There’s always talk of trouble.”

“With your tribe, certainly!”

“What’s that-”

A loud cracking sound echoed around the chambers and the argument died in two throats. All eyes turned to the highest pedestal. The king stared down with weary but fierce eyes. No one moved. No one _breathed_.

“Are our youth becoming too curious?” he asked slowly. “Are they wandering further than we in our younger days did? Do they ask too much?”

The room remained silent. The high king sighed, falling back upon his frozen throne. He looked to the stars in the sky beyond the ice walls that surrounded them. He was getting too old for his position, he knew, and it would not be long before a challenger rose from the other kings. He had yet to decide how he would go. One didn’t always get the chance to plan their own demise.

“They have no respect!”

“Is that so?” he replied, more bored than irritated at the intrusion upon his thinking.

“Look! Look right there! One of the whelps from the north has finally graced us with his presence.”

“Oh?”

The aging king peered down at the gnarled man and followed his accusing finger to one of side entrances to the hall. Indeed, there was a young selkie there with long hair twisted into countless braids that had been twined together with thin strands of kelp. The skin across his back was dark and two long tusks hung from the head on his shoulder, crossing his chest and creating stark contrast between their ivory white and the gray mud caking his skin. He offered a small bow of his head when he caught the king’s gaze.

“Where have you been, boy?”

“Hunting,” he answered with a shrug.

“At this hour?”

“Our women do it. Why not I?”

The man with the scarred skin barked out a laugh but had no chance to respond before the king had his hand up for silence. He motioned the newcomer closer with a measured gesture. His eyes sparkled, and it was impossible to say what lay behind them. The young selkie breathed slowly as he approached, fingers well aware of the exact location of his knives should he need them. He smiled. There was no light in his gaze.

“Name yourself.”

“Trottimus, Prince of the Arctic Seas, son of the Northern Lights.”

“I see,” the high king murmured, once more sitting back in his throne. His brows knit together as he glanced at the boy below. Surely he was no more than a teen, still lost in his reckless youth. “Have you heard the complaints against you?”

“Against me?” he smirked and shrugged. “I don’t listen to that _shit_. I’ve heard what you all say about _us_ though.” He turned to look at the gathered royalty and motioned to the galleries where their offspring watched with bated breath. “You all forget what it’s like to be young! You love to sit around and talk about all the adventures you had when you weren’t fat off your tribe’s offerings, but when your kids try to recreate them you try to leash us! You’re so busy trying to train them to be you, you can’t remember to let them be selkies! When’s any one of them been separate from their skin for even a minute, huh? When have they chased a human? _Been_ chased?”

The only sound in the room of ice was the muted crashing of the waves outside. Trottimus stood defiant with hands curled into fists. He didn’t know what was coming - how could he have? - but he knew it would not be good.

It began as a quiet humming, a vibration he could feel in his bare feet more than hear. But quickly it grew and spread through the gathered nobility until the roar was like thunder trapped inside the temporary halls of the court. Before there was time to think, he found himself running then sliding out through a narrow passage. Wrapping himself in his skin, he dove into the frigid waters and disappeared with the ghosts of grasping hands at his back.

For days he swam, tireless and possessed with the raging of the royals ever in his ears. He ate only when his body threatened to quit. He didn’t stop until the waters became unfamiliar, and his eyes darkened. Even with no map, he knew what line he had crossed. Behind him was all he had ever known, every inch of the globe he had swum. And now, now he was beyond it all.

He set his gaze on the patterns of the seabirds then, and slowly followed them to a foreign shore. There were no glaciers here, no ice or snow clinging to the rocks or the shore. The water that surrounded him seemed warm even when he shed his skin and draped it across his shoulders. He spotted a pier jutting out into the water and took refuge beneath it as he readied himself. There would be no return, he knew, and it burned like saltwater in a fresh wound.

In the shadows of the pier, beneath constellations he could not name, he buried his skin deep beneath rocks and sand. He whispered words of protection with every handful as his way home disappeared from sight. When there was no trace of it or a hole, he pulled one of his knives free from his belt. With his free hand, he loosed his hair from its bindings and shook it free. He combed his fingers through it until he was satisfied it was untangled enough. At last, he gathered it in his fist, and with the blade he’d been given for his first hunt, he cut through his history.

The tide at his feet carried away his shorn locks and tears. He kept his gaze firm though, never glancing back toward the endless ocean that sang for his blood. He washed the last paint from his human flesh and wrapped a towel he found on the sand around his waist. Whatever future awaited him, at least he would make his own destiny. He would not become a token king with more wives and children than sense or strength. And one day, one day he would return to the place beyond the North and prove the worth of his words.


End file.
